Synopsis: Elena (“Agent Ellie”) started her assassination career in a young age as a Russian immigrant to China. She turned upon her masters, and rose high in the ranks of the People’s Army secret service. Tiring of that life, she moved to San Francisco to take up simple corporate espionage where nothing is as simple as it appears.

Excerpt

Thanksgiving Day, 2007, at a cabin outside of Lake Tahoe. Alex Ross and Ellie have just fought off mercenaries with the help of Chinese agents. Ellie is now interrogating them. This was posted to by Alex to his blog a couple days afterwards.

Ellie surveys her prisoners in front of the cabin. An army of trucks and Chinese men winds its way up the smoking path. The first tackle the small fires in the forest and then they round up the corpses. Twenty-three dead and six captured. Ellie’s men dump her gory kills in front of the prisoners. The cabin looks like something out of “The Guantlet,” riddled with hundreds of bullet holes.

“I want you to tell me everything.” She paces before them, her visage caked with drying blood. The men stand with bowed heads, their hands bound with plastic cable ties behind their backs. “Take a good, hard look as these fools. A similar fate awaits you. We are not American citizens, and we are not subject to the rules of this country. You dared attack a foreign agent, and now you will pay the price. We can make you disappear, so that your friends and families will never hear from you again. I want to know who’s behind this and I want to know now.”

The men shuffle and glance amongst themselves. “We didn’t want any of this,” says one dressed in desert fatigues. “This was supposed to be clean, get in, get out, you know?”

Ellie stops and smiles. “You’re one of the leaders, I take it? Good. What are you, a Guardsman or something? Do you have any real experience?”

“Recon over in Iraq.”

“You people are pathetic.” Ellie stomps at them. “If you are the product of the American military, then I don’t think my country has much to fear.” She strips wires and a headset off the man. “Is this how you contact your commander? What’s your call sign?”

The man hesitates. Ellie’s men push guns against his neck but she waves them off. “Please,” she says.

“Foxtrot Delta. My contact is Charlie Papa.”

Ellie dons the headset. “Come in, Charlie. I know you’re listening. Elena Galistina here. I really appreciate you sending your friends to the Ross’s Thanksgiving dinner. I’m so sorry that so many of them chose to be unruly and act inappropriately. I’m afraid that I’ve had to excuse them from the table. Are you still listening, Charlie?”

She winks at me. What is Ellie up to?

“Well, Charlie,” she continues, “I’m sorry you won’t respond. No matter. Your friends have decided to stay. They’re telling me all about you. Foxtrot Delta has been extremely helpful. You’ve just made yourself a terrible enemy. I’m not the kind of person to acknowledge niceties, or the rules of war, or even laws of common decency. Hmm. I think a demonstration is in order.”

She places the wires back on Foxtrot’s head and leans in. “Tell them everything that’s about to happen. I want Charlie to hear every detail. Now choose one. Choose one of your men.”

“No.”

She lays a hand on his shoulder. “Foxtrot. It’s either you or one of them. You remember what I did in the house, don’t you? The teeth? Do you really want to die that way, choking on your own blood?”

He points to one of his men. The dude screams. I’m worried that Ellie has snapped.

“Good. Bring him over there.” Her men drag the struggling merc back behind a Hummer over on the edge of the yard. She walks past me, holding her knife up to the sun.

I shiver. “Don’t.”

She winks at me and grins, then hands me the knife. “I won’t need this.” She disappears behind the vehicle. Her victim screams.

Foxtrot talks into the headset. “She’s behind the truck. He’s screaming, can you hear that? Blood is flying everywhere. Oh my god, she’s a monster. Please, send us some help! Wait—she’s coming back, covered with blood. I’m going to be sick. God help us all.”

I wander over and glance behind the truck. The man is unconscious, but unharmed. Blood lies everywhere, but also a can and a baster. The same baster we were using for the turkey. Where did the blood come from?

Ellie snatches the headset. “Now Charlie, I’d hate to do that to the rest of your men, but once I start, it’s hard to stop. I’ll give you a piece of advice. Get the hell out of town. I will track you down, and I will kill you in the most brutal fashion that our culture has ever produced. I will create a river of blood so thick that you’ll drown in it. If I even feel a breath of yours, I will stifle it so quickly that you’ll be watching you body fall away while I hold your severed head. Now I need to go and finish off these men. Have a nice day.”

She pulled off the rest of the unit and stomped on it, smashing it to bits.

“Let’s go for a walk,” she says nicely to Foxtrot. “Nice and slow. We’ll eventually wind up behind the truck. You don’t want to go behind the truck. You see, I kill with my bare hands. I can make it fast or slow, it’s really up to you.”

They walk towards the truck. Ellie says not a word. Halfway there, Foxtrot hesitates. “What? What do you want to know? Say something. Say something!” She keeps walking, her blood-stained face expectant. “Stop staring at me! What the hell is wrong with you?!” They reach the truck, she cocks her head, eyebrows raised. She motions for him to move.

“Okay! Stop! We received our instructions online. The entire transaction, plans, names, maps, everything. Except for today, no one even ever talked to them. And their voice was scrambled, sounding like a frog or something.”

Ellie just stands there, staring at him.

“What? I’ve told you everything. Say something!”

Ellie points around to the back of the truck. The man’s face is all shades of red.

“No! What do you want? Will you fucking say something!? Shit! Listen, we just get paid. We’re nobodies. I can show you anything. Our website, our IP logs, our servers, the logs for the headsets, everything you need to track them down. Just don’t make me go back there, please.”

Ellie nods at me. I hope for his sake the man is telling the truth.

So I wrote 2 blogvels about Elena. You can find the links on my blog main page (look for 30 Days). Her journey is really only begun, because her parents are still held hostage. Some day I hope to resurrect her character, because she’s a lot of fun.

@Val: Yeah, Elena is not as conflicted as Mary...she likes what she does and is a consummate professional, only killing when she has to. Yeah, she does long for a "normal" life but will fight the bad guys with everything she has.